I was just like, you know, think’n the other day. I live in the 49^th LARGEST state in the country when it comes to land mass (square miles). While some people will say it’s a matter of opinion, we have enough state government to choke a Clydesdale—this is a huge horse in case you don’t drink Budweiser.

 

Opinion notwithstanding, I began wondering what kind of logic the various states’ founding fathers used to determine legislative body size. So, I began researching it.

 

I’m no lightweight when it comes to diligent research. I did it for a living for what seems to have been a couple of hundred years. Trust me on this; understanding the U. S. Tax code is a cakewalk compared to finding any meaningful material on this stuff.

 

Therefore, excluding state-level executive and judicial branches, I did a few comparisons of my own. I used only two common measurements: land area size and population counts (as of 2008). I also subtracted water areas leaving just the net land area sizes.

 

While this fails to answer the “How’d ya decide” question, it shows enormous disparities in the relative sizes of our states’ legislative bodies.

 

Delaware, for example, has a land area of 1,954 square miles. At the end of 2008, its population was 873,000. Its General Assembly (Representatives and Senators combined) comprised 62 members.

 

Pennsylvania, Delaware’s immediate northern neighbor, is 22.9 times larger than Delaware. Its land area is 44,816 square miles. Its 2008 population was 12,448,279. Its legislative body count (Representatives and Senators combined) is 252 members.

 

To Delaware’s immediate south and west is Maryland with a net land area of 9,774 square miles. It’s home to 5,633,597 men, women, and children. Yet, it takes 188 legislators (Representatives and Senators combined) to govern the realm.

 

Way out west, in California, the population is 36,756,666 people, all living within the confines of a land area of 155,959 square miles. But, it only takes 120 state legislators (Representatives and Senators combined) to run the show.

 

Relatively speaking, Pennsylvania can hold about 23 Delawares. California can hold about 80 Delawares and Maryland can hold 5 Delawares. Yet, little ole Delaware seems to need ONE legislator for every 14,081 people or ONE legislator for each 32 square miles of land area.

 

On the other hand, Pennsylvania seems to move along just fine with ONE legislator for every 49,398 people or ONE legislator for each 178 square miles of land area.

 

California manages to struggle along with ONE legislator for every 306,305 people or ONE legislator for each 1,300 square miles of land area.

 

Maryland, on the other hand, apparently feels compelled to pay ONE state legislator for every 29,966 people or ONE legislator for each 52 square miles of net real estate.

 

It seems that the smaller the state, the larger the law-making body. Rhode Island, for example, ranks 50^th with a net land area of merely 1,045 square miles.

 

But, Rhode Island has about 20% more people (1,050,788) than Delaware has. But it requires more than twice the number of lawmakers at 113 (Representatives and Senators combined).

 

It breaks down to ONE lawmaker for every 9,299 people or ONE lawmaker for each 9.25 square miles of land area. For a state that is slightly more than one-half the size of Delaware!

 

None of this includes counts for county and other municipal government bodies. They’re rampaging out of control, too. However, this is a topic for a future column.

 

So, in terms of the STATES, it still begs the question: Who initially proposed the size and allocation for the respective legislative bodies. Here’s what I suspect.

 

Our founding fathers formed a small, lean, and mean central government. It mostly stayed out of the affairs of the states. As the various states came on board, their governing bodies were also small, lean, and mean.

 

Like the feds, state lawmakers stayed mostly out of the daily affairs of the governed, imposing themselves only enough to maintain law and order and to keep the commercial playing fields level.

 

Government service was NOT yet a career choice. Politicians of THAT era, including those at the state level, looked upon public service as a civic duty. More importantly they knew that they did NOT know EVERYTHING.

 

Along the line, something negative happened. I’m not sure precisely when it happened, but it DID happened. Worse, it has spread throughout ALL levels of government much like contagious diseases spread throughout human populations.

 

Large segments of voters discovered that they could get money from the public till. All they had to do was elect the “right” people. And, the “right” people caught on real fast, too.

 

They began to pander to “the people” by promising money for all sorts of stuff, always cleverly earmarked for those in positions to do the most good for the politicians. We’ve been spiraling around the drain of disaster ever since.

 

We, THE PEOPLE, could stop it in a heartbeat. But first we’d have to learn the differences between paradoxes and discoveries, between metaphors and facts, and between heaps of verbal diarrhea and profound truths.

 

This is always going to be easier said than done. Even as a mature representative democracy, we’ve come to assume, reflexively, that stupid people are more honest than intelligent, clever people are.

 

Politics, at ALL levels, seem to have been reduced to appeals based on fear, hatred, and identity issues.

 

Populism now trumps economic reform. Fear has become the method of choice for garnering political support. And, rhetorical pugilistic emoting has replaced meaningful public debate.

 

At this juncture of our political maturity, we have yet to learn of the irreparable devastation wrought by the myriad fallacies of sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

 

What we’ve always called management has become nothing more than a source of government-mandated regulations that do nothing more than make it difficult for productive people to work.

 

And, Delaware is no exception, either. Until this past week, Delaware’s General Assembly had exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). THAT’S RIGHT! A lawmaking body had decided that its business should NOT be subject to the scrutiny of the electorate.

 

This changed last week with the passage of a bill—but not unanimously—subjecting itself to FOIA. The bill’s opponents, however, have already begun challenging its constitutionality.

 

The Governor has said that he would sign it. He hasn’t so far. If he doesn’t sign it, though, he needs to announce that he’ll NOT be seeking reelection in 2012.

 

But, maybe NOT. Given the history of this state’s electorate, perhaps it won’t be a problem for him. After all, the bulk of our state legislators have been there for many years—some for decades. It’s become what they’ve ALWAYS done for a LIVING.

 

I’m retired. I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m financially comfortable, even in the midst of the most serious economic downturn of my lifetime (I’m a post-depression kid).

 

However, as I type this, I am paying $0.56 of every dollar I receive in some form of taxation: federal, state, and local with most of it going to state and local political chaos.

 

I’m getting tired of paying excessively so that useless local and federal career politicians can continue defining reality on their own terms while living lifestyles that mock the way most of the rest of us live. How about all of you?

 

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.